How to create KILLER content

Our resident marketing blogger, Lucia Philip is back at it again, this time showing you how you can create killer content for your social media channels with ease. Grab a notepad, pen and a cuppa and take as many notes as you can. We can’t wait to see your killer content hitting our newsfeeds very soon!

Content marketing can be complex.

There is a lot to consider when developing a strategy – this is where your purpose and what you actually tell people about yourself come together;

Rolling out this strategy production requires resources; Once you’ve produced the content, you still need to advertise it so that your community knows it exists;

You also need to measure it to know if it was successful; and

You need to decide on your next step for engaging with all those who consumed the content.

As if that wasn’t enough, ideally you should have to have a plan for iterating. There is no point producing a great piece of content if you don’t know how to capitalise on it to produce more content your tribe will love.

There’s so much to think about. Even the best of us feel overwhelmed by content marketing from time to time.

To save you from the overwhelm, I’ve outlined a ‘small business guide to content marketing’ below.

Because content marketing can chew up so many resources, most small businesses don’t stick at it long enough to derive value from their efforts.

In 12months time, your competitors will still be stuck at “Step 1- List Everything That Needs To Be Considered And Feel Overwhelmed.” Meanwhile, you’ll be out there engaging with your community of customers and potential customers.

So let’s start at the beginning:

Even the most elaborate content plan can be divided into two basic parts.

Structure

Speed

The structure of your content marketing strategy defines what you are going to say and where you will say it.

The second part of your plan, outlines when you will say it and how often, for how long.

Easy right?

Notice I haven’t spoken about the ‘who’ of your content plan. Your content will almost always be created with your target market in mind and your purpose. For any marketing activity to be successful you need to understand your target market intimately. That is a whole blog post in itself. But let me know if you’d like to read that blog post, I’m happy to write it!

Structure

Firstly, decide on your platform.What channels does your business already use to communicate? Where does your tribe spend their time?

Choose the type of content you will create.What sort of content is successful on this platform? If you are on Instagram, perhaps you’ll do flat lays. If you are on Facebook, video is the way to go. Have a great email list? Fantastic, create a downloadable.

What will you say?
Every single customer of your business has a problem that you can solve. Again, understanding this problem is part of understanding your target market. If you are just starting out, a great way to understand your customers’ problem is by understanding what they search for to find you in Google. Wordstream [INSERT LINK: https://www.wordstream.com/keywords ] offers a great free tool that helps you with keyword research and generation.

Solving this problem should be the basis of your content

Speed

This is the fun bit!

Now that you’ve done the hard work of producing content, your aim is to get maximum mileage out of your content production. Think about how you can carve your content into smaller pieces and share that with your audience.

Finally, it is time to create a schedule for sharing your content with the world. Make sure that you ‘go live’ at a time when you can keep an eye on your chosen platform. If your customers engage with your content, it is important that you are available to answer questions and respond to comments in a timely way- don’t let days go by without responding!

One note on timing. So often I see business owners pour time and effort into creating content that they only share once or twice on their chosen platform. Please don’t hold back on sharing because you are afraid of spamming your customers. Only a small percentage of your tribe will see something you share each time. And if you are creating valuable content, your tribe won’t mind if they see it more than once. The trick is to package it up a little differently each time- highlight a different aspect of the content, write different captions and use different images.

And that is it! It isn’t rocket science. The hardest part is staying consistent. But you can be smart and repackage the content by recycling it throughout the year. And you can reap the rewards of content marketing

CASE STUDY

print.lovely recently launched a line of original prints and wall hangings. They know they have a great product, made with passion and driven by current trends. But they have a limited marketing budget and they are entering a crowded market.

print.lovely are targeting amateur home decorators: females, aged 30-45 who are recent first homebuyers or serial renters. They are on a budget and are looking for stylish ways to beautify their homes on a budget.

Research shows that these women spend a lot of time on Pinterest and Instagram looking for decorating inspiration and how-tos.

Content Marketing structure:

Centre piece content:

1.Video- ‘How to hang framed prints without damaging your walls.’ The full video will sit on the print.lovely website

Offshoot content:

Blog pieces with rich pins, created using stills from the video.

Shorter videos will be made from longer videos and posted to Instagram

Behind the Scenes Video to be created and used on Instagram Stories + Facebook

PR opportunities- interviews with DIY blogs etc

Timing

Week 1

Video uploaded to website homepage and blog post goes live

Behind the Scenes uploaded to Instagram Stories

3-5 Rich Pins uploaded to at least 2 different Pinterest boards

Week 2

Video excerpt uploaded to Instagram feed

3-5 Rich Pins uploaded to at least 2 different Pinterest boards

1-3 Rich Pins Uploaded to Pinterest Group Boards

Week 3

1 video still (image) posted to Instagram Feed- this time, ask for user advice on how best to hang pictures

Delete any underperforming Rich Pins and repin them to Pinterest Boards

Video excerpt uploaded to Facebook

Send Newsletter to your email list alerting them to the video living on your website

Week 4

Approach DIY blogs and other contacts asking whether they would be interested in sharing the video with their community.

Upload Rich Pins to Pinterest (the same or different boards)

Week 5

‘Rest’ the content

Week 6

Video still uploaded to Instagram with a caption expressing delight and gratitude for all the suggestions positive comments from your community.

Rich Pins are ever green content that can be pulled down and repinned every few months.

The video is also evergreen. It can be removed from the website when other content is available and then uploaded at a later stage.

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